Let's talk about finding jobs and pricing your services as a freelance developer, as an engineer,
programmer, developer, etc. It won't be difficult for you to find jobs online.
There are a ton of resources out there and the two main ways to find opportunities are firstly on freelance
sites like Upwork.
Now in this course, I walk you through setting up your Upwork profile and finding jobs on there.
However, I do want to stress that it's very important for you to understand you can use this same strategy
wherever you find jobs online, because at the end of the day, a client has a problem and you as the
freelancer are there to solve it.
The second place you can find and apply to jobs is on job board websites.
One of those job board websites is Hacker News.
Hacker News is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship, and they also
have an extremely simple job board with different development and engineer positions that are open.
Next is We Work Remotely, which claims to be the largest remote work community in the world.
You can find and apply for remote jobs easily and quickly on this platform.
Here are some of the top remote job searches.
You can see 100% remote jobs, remote WordPress jobs, remote Python jobs, remote PHP jobs, remote
react jobs, JavaScript, Java, etc. And within there you can click it, you can open it, and then
you can begin to go see every single job position that is open based on the skill set that you have
chosen.
And this is also trusted by the world's leading companies.
You have Google, Amazon, etc. that are listing jobs on the We Work Remotely website.
So this is a great website to check out.
In addition, Design Modo is a website designed for hiring remote and full time web designers and developers,
and they boast over 800,000 monthly viewers, over 550,000 social followers in over 143,000 email subscribers.
So this is a website that is designed specifically for remote and full time jobs for web designers and
developers.
So if you fall into that category, this is a great website to check out for any open job positions
that may suit your specific liking.
Next is Remote OC, which is a website that promotes the motto Work Anywhere, Live Anywhere.
They also claim to be one of the number one remote job boards where you can find developer and engineer
jobs.
Lastly is Angel List Talent, which is a massive startup community which you can find remote tech company
opportunities.
They claim to be the number one startup community specialized in remote and local technical talent and
opportunities.
So different startups that are looking for talent come to the Angel List talent, and this is where
they can find different developers and engineers that are in the community.
And that is also where you can either go to find a job or as a client they can go on this website to
find talent to fit the specific role that they need to hire for.
Now, let's talk about pricing your services as a developer or an engineer.
The first step is to truly understand the requirements and the scope of work.
Scope is an important consideration for any development project, and it's one that can quickly spiral
out of control if your original estimation and budget is not accurate.
A single page website generally takes much less time to build compared to a massive enterprise level
customized web based application.
You can also reduce the cost of a project by requesting a minimum viable product, also known as an
MVP.
This type of project includes the very minimum amount of features and design needed for you to test
it in the market.
This will help reduce your scope and you can always expand the MVP should the project be successful.
And you can also consider creating your application in different phases so that you can build on your
software slowly, testing it thoroughly, and then build revenue as each phase is being coded and you
charge the client.
It also depends on the platform slash the coding language you are offering services in.
So web projects typically run on one of two different platforms, either Linux or Windows.
Now Linux is an open source operating system, whereas Windows OS is commercial.
Now Windows hosting can be more expensive than Linux because Windows charges for licenses.
However, Linux platforms makes money through support contracts.
Other aspects of platforms can affect the cost of a development project as well.
Most web projects require a database and Windows platforms include the SQL Server.
The SQL Server is much more expensive than hosting my SQL, which is usually the go to database for
Linux developers.
Many enterprise platforms run on Windows though, so take this factor into consideration.
Many host providers give you a discount if you pay a yearly contract upfront, so this can also lower
your cost a bit.
Now, if you use Linux hosting, your hosting costs could be cheaper.
Even with cheaper programming costs, you still need a client who is looking to work within your language,
of course.
For the most part, programming ranges are similar for web development languages.
But here's a general idea of what rates freelancers charge.
A basic one page site, just a one page of coding.
A basic lead gen page or landing page is an average hourly rate of $15 to $40 plus per hour.
Next is CMS code customization.
So basic customization of a themes code or general functionalities of a common CMS platform.
Average hourly rates for that are between $30 to $75 plus per hour.
Next is full custom site code.
Building a design from scratch with custom code and design elements is obviously going to be much more
labor intensive and is usually a large project that requires coding from the ground up for this specific
type of project.
The average hourly rates are anywhere from $75 an hour to $100 plus.
At the end of the day, it's important to make sure you communicate and understand exactly what the
client is looking for so that you can give them the best and most accurate price estimate for your services.
Most development times are slightly above or below an estimate because long coding projects are difficult
to accurately estimate from the start.
However, the more detail you have and the more you understand the scope of work based on the questions
you are asking, the closer you can come to estimating an accurate price for your services.
Now let's talk about getting to the truth.
And as a freelance developer, one of the most important and challenging parts of your role is to ensure
that you understand exactly what the client actually wants produced.
A lot of times this is different than what the client thinks they want produced or what they include
in the job description.
So it's up to you to get to the truth of the matter so you can deliver the best work so the client's
happy and then you can get good reviews, which will help propel your career forward.
This means it's up to you to get the truth out of what the client is looking to achieve, as well as
getting the truth across of what it will take to get them there all the way from the different tools
you will have to use to the rate you will need to charge them based on what their goals are.
Since projects can be difficult to estimate an exact price for when you're just starting out freelancing
as a developer, I do suggest that you begin charging on an hourly basis.
Eventually, you can move to a retainer based project basis down the line when you are more comfortable
with your scope of work price estimates and you have more experience delivering the type of work that
you are doing as a freelancer.